AI Founders Podcast

Transcript

This is the SAS Universe podcast presented by Uber saga.

Hey everyone, and welcome to today's episode where Super Happy to introduce to you and entrepreneur and pioneer in Asia s.com Revolution. He was perhaps one of the first to set up Internet portals in India back in the late 1990s. And I'm sure Joseph, our CEO and founder, will have no dearth of topics to speak about with Raja. Who is the founder and managing director of Netcore? Now let me give you a quick background about who Rajesh is. He is no stranger to the world of entrepreneurship. Why do I say this? Well, he's literally been there and done that back. In 1999 His Venture India world was acquired by Satyam Infoway. In what was perhaps one of. Asia 's largest Internet acquisitions in 1999, he sorry, in 1998 he founded Netcore which is India, 's largest marketing automation company? It's a privilege to have someone with such a rich career in the technology field. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'm sure you will have a ton. Of insights to walk away with.

Hello and welcome to the SAS phones podcast. It's so nice to have you Rajesh on our show and we were having this quick chat before this. You know recording and a lot of different things that caught my attention, you know, is something that I want to express, and the first one was this whole term called profit con. And I heard this term before, but never beautifully explained the way Rajesh explains it, and I'm pretty sure you'll also get to listen to that. Also, one of the other things that I liked about Rajesh is going through his profile is that he's very articulate about his thoughts and especially people shy away from talking about. Politics, and I've seen Rajesh not doing so and being very brazen about it and and he's a straight shooter and at the same time. He's able to like share what he wants to share, which is really. So I highly recommend you you know going and reading his his webs, you know blogs on his site. It's going to be very, very useful to you and so. Thank you, Rajesh. I mean, it's really nice to have you on. Our show.

A pleasure thank you for inviting me Joseph.

Great so I'm gonna like do a whole journey rewind. Let's go back to the origins of Netcore and how did it. How did it all start? I'm I'm pretty sure like. You have a great story. I mean, you studied at IIT went and studied in us for the for the you know your studies there and connected to different people. But how did netcode happen? And and just take us through the whole genesis of netcore.

Sure. So before I start with the. Net code story, I'll have to back up a little bit to talk about my previous venture India world, because that is what led to the origins of. Net core. After I come back from the US in 1990.

Oh, sure, absolutely.

2 and for me the decision to come back was actually made by my father. When I went to the US he said finish your masters in 9 months work 2 years in the US and then come back and do whatever you want in India. He had done the same. In the mid 60s, so that was sort of the decision was already made for me. I came back and the first couple of years of a lot of failures. I tried many different.

Right?

Areas and. Nothing, none of them worked out and it was in late 1994 that I went back to the US for a couple months or trying to explore what to do. There were 34 ideas that I had and one of them was to do with the Internet and I realized the problems when I wanted to come back to India. Getting information on India was very, very difficult. And so I thought, maybe the Internet, which was just emerging at that time, could be a great bridge of information. And that's how I launched India, 's first Internet portal in March 1995. Very different from my previous background, which was in technology. This was more like a media platform, but entrepreneurs are a bit like that. You know you go where the opportunities are, and I mean all launched around the time that Yahoo launched around the time that. EBay launched, so we are very early. And India world grew very well and we got a good exit in India world in November 1999, when Satyam Infoway later on called Sify. They bought us for 115 $1,000,000. Most of it was cash. We had not raised any capital that's. The profit con and net core is the second profit con. We'll talk. About that later. So the idea being that the origins of net core started and we have pivoted through the year. So like many companies we are 25 years old. But the early origins were as a as a Linux based, a mail server company, because future of websites for companies they were getting emails. They know how to handle them, so we helped set up open source solutions on their local area networks, helping them get the emails, route them internally, giving email IDs to all of their people so they could then interact. On themselves and of course with potential customers global. So that was the start for India world. But for the first 10 years we didn't grow much and I tried a lot of different ideas. We built the world's we built the world, 's first block the search engine ideas, probably ahead of their time. We couldn't take them to market so. Had to had to experience a lot of failure with many of the products that I had at that time. And it was in 2007 8 time frame when 2 things happened when I professionalized the management, I brought in a CEO to help build out net core. Abhijit Saxena, he was the first of 3 CEO 's in the last 15 years and second is that we focused on enterprise services, email and SMS at that time. Which are really the cornerstones also of netcore. Today we've expanded the portfolio, but that's sort of the foundation for the net core that you see today. They would help companies send out SMS, 's to their customer base emails to their mailing lists at that time. So we called it bulk mass mailing. 2007 8 time frame Indian customers primarily and that's how we began.

Awesome awesome great. I mean really really great journey and in a it's it's nice to actually see a seasoned entrepreneur. I mean, very rarely do I get a seasoned entrepreneur who who understands. I mean, I'm I feels more like, you know, talking to a cricketer in and all that sort side, you know, understand. Field and and gets to know how to operate. So how did this whole, you know, pinpoint a problem statement aspect was discovered, right? So did you like, was it something that you were struggling with or you saw somebody at close quarter struggling with and you really felt that you need to do something about it and it was very gripping for you?

Yeah, So what happened is that when we began we were trying to do some consumer SMS services basically, but there. But that was a huge cash month because we have to spend sending out the SMS 's and then TRAI jacked up the prices dramatically.

So true, yes.

So that became a problem. We had to stop those services so we had SMS expertise. We had SMS infrastructure, so we forgot what we do with. It, and that's where the idea came that hey, you know what? There are lots of mobile phone users in India and enterprises could also benefit from sending out SMS to their customers. A couple other companies have. Already started in India at that time, so we leverage our own SMS infra to do that. The email story was somewhat similar. We used to do the Linux based mail servers for internal emails, primarily for customers and they said, you know we have collected a lot of email IDs of our customers. They all been to see companies and we need to send out mails to them in a smart way. We can't send out sort of one at a time. We need to do mass, meaning you know bulk emailing and then we built a platform for enabling them to send out emails to lists so they could then do some segmentation on their lists and start sending out emails to their large lists that they had. So both of these sort of started little differently. One came out of a problem, one came out of just listening to both. In a way came out of listening to customers and solving pain points, and I think that's the best way to build products. Basically, listen to what customers really are experiencing the pain that they're experiencing, and then how do you. On solving that with some expertise that you have. Rather than sort of going in completely afresh.

Absolutely, absolutely great so. In your whole journey, right? I know net core has matured as a product and has got a suite of products, but any moment of Epiphany that that you look back and you really like soaked up the whole. You know the emotion at that point of time looking back and and building the whole things, any moment of epiphany. That that made you feel that, hey, this is really validated. What the journey, what all the struggles and the pain.

So very recently I was in the US. I love visiting the US because, you know, you get to meet a lot of people. There are conferences which happen and they are very high quality content and it was 2 and a half years because of the pandemic that have not been able to travel and so on this trip. US is a small business for us. We have started our journey a couple of years ago. So on this trip I I met with quite a few of our customers there and just listening to them in terms of describe how our net core is helping them, I think validated a core belief that I've had for some time, that the products that. We have which have largely worked very well in India and emerging markets. So unlike many other SAS companies, we started in India more as an enterprise software company and of course now it's all moved to a SAS model. Yeah, Southeast Asia Middle East Africa. They have worked very well, but there's always the doubt whether these things can work in the US and developed markets. And Netcore has 50 plus customers now in the US. We also did a very large acquisition a couple months ago, acquisition come investment unboxed, which is into a complementary space as ours and just seeing. And the fact that we as a company in India are able to service customers globally, we now have over $10,000,000 in revenue between net core and unboxed, coming from the US. I think it's it's phenomenal, because when I began in India were when I began net core. My goal was to really build a 10,00,00,000 revenue company. India world was. Like a few. Crores in revenue. Probably a sub under $1,000,000 when. Sold and now to think of a company I was reflecting back on the on the flight and I said, you know we've come a long way. It's close to 100 $1,000,000 now in in revenue. Looking at an IPO next year and it's been a it's taken us a long time. I probably could have short circuited the journey had I brought in professional management. Clear I'm not very good at sort of the go to market and. All of that. I like ideas, and that's the real. My sort of. OK, but it's been a great journey and I've always looked at netcore as a company where it's it's what Jim Collins would call call a built to last company or an enduring great company. And we've never had a sort of a short term. Mission we are not working to sell. We have no investors in net core. That's what I call a profit on. Private, profitable, bootstrapped and highly valuable. India world was very similar. And by not having investors you are able to take the very long term view. Sometimes you know you get investors looking for sort of OK. What is the quarterly numbers you have? And so on, and obviously will change once once we do an IPO, but I think the ability to think long is what has always helped. Us in in, in, in net core, so it's this sort of ability to think next 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. You know what is the vision that we have? How is it that we build a company out of India which can service global customers and actually seeing? And listening to customers in the US talk highly of the product that we have. How we are helping them, I think was was a moment of great joy for me.

Wow, yes, so having said that, I'm going to ask you, you know, for 3 quick advises you have for SAS founder who who is at the verge of starting a business. So if you had to, this is more like talking to yourself. You know if you had to go back in time and give advice to the 20 year old Rajesh, what would that be for any couple of advisories?

OK, so I'll I'll pick 3 themes that are very close to my heart as we build netcore, so that's really what I would advise them. I think the first is that get past the tyranny of the OR and focus on the genius of the end. It's a phrase from one of Jim Collins 's book. Many times you are told like very specifically, to apply this. You are told that you can either have growth or you can be profitable and most investors tend to prefer growth. And growth at all costs actually can be quite dangerous, because at anytime when the capital runs out or there's a slowdown, as we are likely to experience in the coming months. That then can be very damaging to the business. Then you know you have to take very tough decisions of probably laying off people and so on. Net core one, so I would advise the entrepreneur look at profitable growth. Look at profits and growth. It's possible to combine it. We have done it. Companies like Zoho wingy. Sai Zycus Root mobile earlier fonts and petal city has taken the healthcare space. There are many companies who have done this. Zerodha is another example. Who've grown and who are profitable without having raised external capital. So all of the companies I mentioned have built their businesses. Without raising capital route, mobile of course went IPO a year or so ago, but the entire business was built without external capital, so it's possible to do it. It just means you have to work harder. You have to think harder, there's less money to waste. You got to think of the path to. Profitability very early. On so that's the first advice I would give. The second is think long term. So many entrepreneurs now tend to sort of begin by saying, hey, you know what, I'll in your presentations will build this business out in the next 34 years. And we'll, we'll get this kind of valuation. And we'll exit. In my mind, the paths that the entrepreneur is on or should be on is a highway where there are no exits. So you got to run this. You got to imagine that you want to run this for the rest of your life. OK, there is no looking back. This is the business you have. There is no no, there are. There are no exits. Of course, you will evaluate obscenities to exit as they come. But in your mindset, it has to be that I'm building this for the rest of my. Got it OK because then the decisions that you will make are very different from our business which is built to sell versus built to last. Absolutely yes. OK, so that's the second piece of advice you know. Think long term and make decisions appropriately, and the 3rd is. What what I call as extreme employee centricity that make your employees part of the growth story. Net core is probably one of the very few companies which has 25% equity reserved for employees. Or ESOP pool is 25%.

Wow, wow.

And I think hopefully when when we do an IPO will have created more wealth than many other companies have created where the founders and employees end up probably with single digit sort of equity stakes even though they. Are they have raised a lot of. Capital, but I think you have probably done far better than many of those companies. Of course, no one likes to talk about us right about us because we are not the sort. Of venture funded but from an entrepreneurs perspective. It gives me great satisfaction that over the years we've now built a very, very strong business which when we when we list. That will create very will have very good wealth creation for a lot of our our employees, past and present. And we've done 2 buybacks. 2 ESOP stock buybacks also with our own capital. Profitability profitability combined with growth, a long term view and make your make your employees large beneficiaries in the growth story in the success story that you create other 3 pieces of advice that I would give to entrepreneurs.

No, these are like amazing value bombs that you already dropped, so I mean. Yeah, if you're listening to this, I think you wanted to like really go back. Reflect whether you are where you are and then probably benchmark and and plan from there.

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So I'm interested in the early early stages. Again, going back, how did you get your first 10 customers? I mean how did you cross the chasm?

OK, so if I look back I'll focus on the email business because that's what we have now. Multiple products, email, SMS. We have a full marketing automation stack and plus we've done 3 acquisitions so it's a. It's a large portfolio basically for B 2 C companies for customer engagement. And so on. But in the email business, the email marketing business that we had, we already had a number of customers who are using US for their mail server business. So we had the Linux Mail server business, so the first 10 customers really came from a subset of those customers, so they were companies there who had. A pinpoint how do I send out email to not 20 people but 20,000 people or 100,000? And that is where we built our solution. So they came to us with a problem. We solved it for one company and then we realized that there are at least 510 other companies in our portfolio who have the same problem who are struggling to send out emails to their customers telling them about the new offers that they have. Also triggered meals on when they bought up when they bought a product. So this is India in the in the late 2010 so about 2007 to 89 time. So that's how we got our first 10 customers and then once we add that then I think sort of the references multiplied. There were no other companies will be doing that in India at that time. Yeah, so we had a virtual monopoly. I'd like to say that we still probably do 75% of India 's email traffic enterprise email traffic. From B to C, companies actually goes out through us. So that's that's 12 billion emails in India, 18 billion emails globally every month, every month. So that's a lot of scale wow. So that's how we began. That's how we got our first customers and then sort of. There's been no looking back. That one.

Amazing, so let's talk about today and Fast forward to today. Walk us through what is. Net core today. I mean it's become a pretty big suite. I do see everything right from you started with SMS and email, but now you have us. You know content. You know you. Know data platform and you you have a very robust martech you know infra that you have already built right? So if you can just quickly walk us through what is what it is today and who does it help and what's what's your unique value proposition?

Sure, so rather than talk about the actual products which are there? OK, let me let me look at it from. The marketer side. You know that's a better way to look at it. So what is you have all this P 2 C? Companies that are. Marketers, they have problems they have pinpoints. So what is it? How is it that we are helping them? The first pinpoint that a marketer has is that how do I build a hotline to my existing customers? So I have these customers I need to get them back to my website or app or even perhaps to my store physical world store. Now there are only 2 ways I can do it. I either have a phenomenal brand, in which case people will come automatically like an Amazon or Flipkart or whatever. Or I have to use push messages? Whether it's emails, whether it's SMS, WhatsApp push, notifications to be able to attract them back, so that's the first problem. We solve for brands. So it's what I call the push problem the the push pipe we're helping the hotline creation. The second is that how do I partition my customers I have? 1,000,000 5,000,000 10,000,000 customers. Now for that. I have to collect a lot. Of the data so that and then I have to have various parameters on which I can do segmentation. Because I probably. Don't want to send the same message across my push pipe to everyone. So there is this partitioning, so the second P, as it were, the pipes and then the second P is partitioning. Where there are multiple ways by which the segmentation can be done, but linked with the segmentation, of course is the data collection. The analytics that is there and so on and we are collecting the analytics from the websites that their customers are visiting from the app. Also that customers are visiting from the actions that people are doing on emails. What emails are they opening? What emails are they ignoring what? Links are they clicking on all of that data, then together and lets you do this partitioning. That is there. And that's typically through a martech suite which is there. The 3rd is really. What are the actions that marketers can do on the properties that they have? So on the website, how do I do journey orchestration? So you've added something to my cart? You've not completed the purchase. How can I? Send you trigger messages for you, which can help you complete that transaction. How can I personalize the website for you? You are different from someone else, so when you're coming there, how can I show you the right products for you? How can I send you? How can I basically show you the products which are very likely to? Get you to make the transaction so the sort of the next best action, as it were.

Mm-hmm mm-hmm

How do I essentially do things where I can give nudges inside of an app so as a marketer, there's a lot of pathways that I can guide you on, but maybe sometimes I want to highlight a few things, like in this case for one of our customers. Airtel. What we help them is with their prepaid customers when they come in 2 days before they are period is expiring or their time. The 30 days or whatever pack is expired. You want to guide them towards ensuring that the pack is renewed, so you want to highlight some parts on the app to. Make sure that. They pay up in time. Otherwise, Airtel would lose a. Customer because it's a prepaid.

Right?

Pack so all of these are products. Where Netcore essentially helps. So right from sending out emails, Smses? That's one of the push. Are collecting all of the data into a marketing CDP, then the journey orchestration personalization nudges. Which are there?

Right?

And now in the last couple of months, the the product that we've added, which is also solving a big problem for B, 2, C&B 2 C companies, is really the search box. So everyone has all all have the search box and a lot of times the the journey begins with the search and in many cases if the search results are not very good then you lose the customer. So you may have the product in your catalog, but if you're not able to surface it by deciphering the intent of. The typed in words and then you will lose the customer. So unboxed has an amazing AI based platform which really helps with search, which helps with recommendations because they can aggregate data from across a lot of searches. See what people clicked on, what they did not click. And so on. So these are I think very, very critical problems for marketers. Because the solving these right helps them on their journey to profitability, and that's really very important because otherwise. You will miss out on your existing customers and then you have to then get into the spending on new customer acquisition through Google and Facebook, which is very, very expensive.

True, true.

For taking care of your customers stops the ad waste, which happens, you know, on reacquisition, wrong acquisition and so. So that's where the world of Martech becomes very important. I think Martech is really the key to profit centric marketing. You know where it's the engine really? For your existing customers, that's what drives attention. That's what drives loyalty. That's what drives reference. If you have a good experience on the property on the website. The app personalized experience personalized emails. You talk about it to others. It drives reference, which reduces the cost of new customer. So Netcore really is the is one of the key invisible entities between the brand and the customer. Creating for amazing experiences.

Wow, so it's almost like powering the whole ecosystem, you know so. To speak for a customer. You know end to end, right? That's how I I I.

See absolutely right.

So Yep, so going back to this whole thing about, I wanted to ask you a question on raising funds. But then you actually through this whole amazing thing. Back at me. Saying hey, we. Are a prophet count? So I want to I want to dig a little more you. Know you know and understand. About what is the thesis? For profit con, you know. So how did you actually like come to a place where you decided as as a founding team that we are going to be bootstrapped? Even there's there's an abundance of capital, and this is our thesis. And this is. Why, you know we are doing what we are doing right? So I believe every entrepreneur has a thesis for being a bootstrap. Founder and what was your thesis?

So when I started India world that was way back like I said. Early 1990. 5 so advice, in fact, that my the advice that my father had given was when I came back to India couple few years earlier, he said. Never take on debt and do not take other peoples money till you're 100% sure you can return it back.

Got it.

So that sort of stuck with me and in a business that are always challenges, risks, etc. So the initial capital came from me for starting India world. But because I had at that time, capital was not easily available there, it's not like it is today. This was 2520, almost 30 years ago. And we have to be very careful. So very quickly we are a small team. My wife and I worked together in the early days to ensure that we are both very hands on and we have worked together for the last 30 years. Most of the.

Oh wow, wow.

Last 30 years and. I've been a great partnership. And what what we decided at that time was that you have to be profitable very quickly. So in India world. The profits the the key to profitability for us at that time came from doing websites for companies who wanted an Internet presence. So even though we had our portals, advertising took some time to come in. But we started doing the websites and that helped the cash come in on a regular basis. And it's not that we did not try Joseph to raise money, even in net core. Even in India world I've tried many times I've singularly failed in all my efforts and. Sometimes I like to when I think about it, I say probably my problem is that I go into a meeting with a VC or PE and I tell them I expected valuation right up front. And every time I don't get it, I sort of increase it. For the next. I dont reduce it but. I increase it for the next one. And it's it's a fair number which I quote, and I tell them, look, you know not going to find anything wrong in my business you can do the due diligence you want to get to this discussion. Might as well save us both time if you can't match what I want. I am not going to come down and there's no point having the conversation, so only if you're interested should we have even a. Next round of discussion. And well, so it's never worked out, but I can take that bold approach because I have money in the bank because I'm making money every month. I have profits. I can take an aggressive approach and it's basically sort of worked out well. We've had our ups and downs to these 30 years as an entrepreneur, but. I think it's it's a good outcome that good place where we are at right now. So that's how it's been.

Awesome, so this is this is really amazing to to to know right? So I'm going to go to my most favorite segment which is rapid fire right? So I'm gonna ask you some quick rapid fire quiz. And I don't have a hamper right now to send you, but I know you're very far away, but I will send you a hamper if. You answer really well. So let's see how. You how well you do, right?

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The first question is, are you reading a book or watching a movie? And I think that you want to share with our you know listeners that could encourage them.

So it's a book I finished reading. I'll also tell you a book I'm reading right now, but a book for entrepreneurs, which I would very very highly recommend, is the last book of Jim Collins beyond entrepreneurship. 2.0 It's not as well known as some of his earlier books. Good to. Great and built to last.

Right?

But in beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 there is this map. In one of the chapters, which basically brings together all his learnings and all his principles from through his writer from his writing career and guiding businesses, and I think it gives a shared vocabulary to the founding team. So it's something which I would recommend that all founders. Read with their teams and we have done this exercise a year and a half. Ago and it was fantastic.

Oh wow, OK.

The book I'm reading right now so it's not exactly rapid fire. I'm taking a little bit more time to answer it a longer answer, but is winning on purpose by Fred, right.

Yeah, no issues.

Well, so Fred Reichheld is the person who came up with the Net Promoter score, and this is probably 4th or 5th book which he has come out with. Just came out a few months ago and the book talk has one of the ideas in the books in the. Book is about. The Net Promoter 3.0 and an idea which he discusses is. Earned growth the entire focus really is on existing customers. How do you track the return the growth from existing customers? How do you build a business and measure the growth, excluding what you're spending on paid media? So it's a great way to build a business. One of the lines in the book in the first chapter is basically that the purpose of a business is to enrich the lives of customers, and I think it's a great line and one of the podcasts that I heard Fred that I called said that really is the best way to be profitable is to make sure your customers come back and they bring their friends along. And I think in that one sentence you know you capture retention, repetition and referrals. And somewhere marketing has lost its way in the last 10 years because it's all become about new customer acquisition. I think we sometimes miss the importance of existing customers and we just take care of them. I think that's the route to to sort of what I call exponential forever profitable growth.

Yeah absolutely absolutely. Thank you for suggesting both these books. I mean really, really good. Is there? Is there a? CEO that you are at this point of time like studying and following. Or in the past you've done so that you want to share.

So I made a person a few years ago and when I had asked him for advice on how should I grow net core, this was sort of after I had some of I had done some of my political work and I was coming back into Netcore and he said Rajesh look at a company Danaher da Na. It's a U.S. company. It has done perhaps the best in acquisitions, so it has grown with acquisitions. He said as you grow, you will have to look at doing acquisitions, right? So said Danaher will teach you 2 things. How to do acquisitions in a way that they don't fail? Because most acquisitions do tend to fail and the second is they have this thing called the Danaher Business System which they get all their companies to adopt where it's almost like the Japanese Kaizen system. So basically where you improve every day so it's processes. Which really guide. Growth guide daily behavior rather than just add hotness. Because if you want to build a company which is going to be big, you will need both of these things. You need very good processes. You need a business system and you will need to do acquisitions, right? So I think the current CEO of GE. Is the CEO at that time? Of Danaher, but there are. There's a Harvard Business case study. There are not too much on the company, but there's a Harvard Business case study, which I think shares a lot of info, and they've been covered in some books. One of the books that they've been covered is a book called the Leading from the Lessons from the Titans. Which came out a year ago where they take the large traditional companies. Not the new age companies, but there are lessons for what new age companies can learn from the traditional companies. Oh wow. So again, another very, very good book.

I would definitely want to think that. Nice nice. I think you've given.

Scott Davis is one of the authors. There are 3 authors from a company called Melius Research, so I think it's. Lessons from the titles.

Got it so I think next time I make a trip to Mumbai I'm definitely gonna come and have a sneak peek at your library so I know that there's some. Amazing books out there. Great, awesome, and what's your favorite SAS SAS tool?

OK, so. The tools I use in my personal life are are very few. I don't spend too much time on social media. My life is about creating chunky time for thinking, reading and writing.

OK, thank you.

So I try and avoid distractions in my life. In a way, for me, my favorite tool is WordPress. I know it's very basic, but what WordPress allows me to do? Is to basically it's helped me simplify the process of writing every day. My blog@rajeshjain.com I've been blogging for more than almost the bulk of my sort of working for my entrepreneurial life. From 991999 to 2012, I wrote daily. So at that time it was movable type which was there, and then I stopped writing because I was working on the political stuff. So I did not block, but I April, 20, 20 I restarted blogging and I chose WordPress. It's a very minimal theme. There are no distractions, but it's a tool which just lets me write. Get my thoughts out and I don't worry about who is reading. For me the writing is a process of thinking and reading and making my own vision of tomorrow's world. What you mentioned right in the beginning. Are better and better, so the themes I write on are marketing entrepreneurship in India. And it's a tool where I spend quite a bit of time because that's what I do my writing.

Oh wow, amazing amazing next quick question. Rapid fire question to you is how many hours of sleep? Do you get every night?

OK, that's easy. 6 and a half. I typically sleep by 10 and I wake up wake.

OK.

Up at 4:30

Awesome, and what does it feel like to be a? I wanted to ask Unicorn, but now I'm going to ask profit con found there. What does it feel like I mean?

I mean, it's it's it's. It's good because we have the, you know, freedom of freedom to do what we want. 2 years ago I had written a post on my blog profile, cons versus unicorns, and I had written at that time that in terms of crisis, I had 3 or 4 distinguishing factors. And one of them was in terms of crisis, unicorns, fire people and profit. Cons hire people.

Oh wow, OK, great and my last rapid fire question is how has pandemic changed your life?

OK so 2 things. One is that it sought me to work from home. I was always sort of go to office type of person. But now I'm I'm quite comfortable spending time at home and and working, and the second is it got me a lot of time with my. Sun, so life otherwise has been very busy, but he was 15 when the pandemic started in 17 now and we got a lot of time together and we just talk about you know now he knows. While he doesn't know a lot of the people, but he knows them by face, he has a very good memory and he's become my personal Google. Tell him. Abhishek, that person I had spoken to you about. Remember what's his name, what he said. That's fun stuff. I mean more serious. Note, I think it helped us build a better relationship. Otherwise fathers tend to be parents, many as a father. I was working a lot hard working. And do not get as much time. With him And our life is all about business. My wife works, so these are only kids. So net core is really there at work. And at home.

Nice so I have a very simple question and have a last question. So my simple question is how? What is your vision of of politics and I asked this question because. A lot of times I think we want to make every founders out there to make a big change. And politics is a really amazing vehicle to to, you know, be there and do that. And I love love the fact that you you just mentioned on your blog, Israel on your about page you know about, not you're not about politics, you're beyond politics, right? So I mean, what's your advice to to entrepreneurs like? How do you actually develop good sense of anchors? When you actually are are looking at these kind of themes in life.

So my political journey after you a short story as to how it began because it's not normal for tech people or tech entrepreneurs to wander into politics. When I was probably 2008 when my son was 3 years old, a friend of mine. Asked a question, he said, Rajesh. You're seeing a lot of things not going right in India going wrong. You have the time you have the money. I mean, if your son asks you when you grow up, Papa you at the time and you add the money, why didn't you do something about it when you saw all these things going wrong, what will you answer? And from there I realized that I have to do something about it. You know, at the end of day, politics does impact all our lives. So the political decisions and decisions not made. And that started almost a 10 year plus journey. Some things worked out well, some things didn't. But the way I look at it is that I think the question which all of us should be asking is. Why is India poor? Why are Indians not as rich as Singaporeans as Americans as South Koreans as Japanese even as Chinese? I mean we have the we are naturally endowed as a very good country. We have great talent I. Mean we have. The the same person who struggles in India to. To do well? Is among the top earners in the US. Or in Singapore?

So true, so true.

So why is India not poor? Because the answer to that question really can set us on a path to making Indians rich. And the short answer, and I won't go into it's there on my lot of the ideas I have written on my blog, but it's really about freedom that I think it's a probably a non intuitive. Answered that once we realize that Indians are really not free, we are. Living in what I call British Raj 2.0. And it's. And it's been that way since since 1947, because the rules that govern us did not change much from what they were under the British. The Constitution was derived from the Government of India Act of 1935, and I think it's the entrepreneurs in India.

Oh true, yes.

Who have given a great hope for prosperity and wealth creation in the past few years because entrepreneurs are now solving problems that governments in India have not solved for 7075 years. Yeah, when you look at education, you look at healthcare. You look at logistics. I mean, I was at in in the in the conference that I attended in the US. There was one presentation on what are the learnings for E commerce companies from Asia? And one of them was. Quick delivery 10 minute delivery and the examples were all Indian companies now. Whether they survive long term or not is moot question, but the very fact that people are innovating.

OK, nice. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it takes a lot to get 10 minutes delivery to happen, and there's a lot of innovation at the back and take innovation.

So true.

You know management, innovation etc to to get it done. And really entrepreneurs. Are India 's great hope and perhaps the last hope that if we can build things independent of government. OK, if we can essentially help downstream prosperity.

Right?

I think you we we really will do wonders to the lives of a of a of a billion people. And politics is of course one vehicle. For that I think entrepreneurship is another vehicle for. And that's what sort of we all should be thinking in our lives. How can we make one of these 2 paths take one of these 2 paths to sort of give back and make make India freer and richer?

That that is really nice, you know, way of looking at things and and the very strong grounded perspective. So I mean, it's coming from somebody 's been there, done that. So very love love this I'm ending this question I ask every every guest on the show which is what's something that you wish you knew when you were 2.

Economics OK got it. Most of my education was engineering. And I wish I had developed a love for the liberal arts, especially economics, and it's the classical liberal economics. It's not the economics that is taught in India, which is sort of, I think from what I hear from people, it's frozen. In the 60's and 70s all the socialism nonsense that's there, but it's really this question of why are?

Hmm hmm.

Countries which it's about economics is really about human behaviour. It's about incentives. It's about you. Know the fact that spontaneous order is possible. You really don't need people to make people in power to make decisions for us. If you just leave us alone, we can make each other rich through voluntary exchange. Now these are ideas which I did not discover till. Probably I was 4546. And I think if I had probably learned about the right sort of economics and perhaps spend a little bit more time on the humanities, the liberal arts, very good literature, etcetera, I think what they call the P politics, philosophy, and economics. That's that's one regret I have, and I'm trying to make up for that.

Great, so it was really nice having you on a show. Rajesh, I'm in a lot of different topics that we discussed and got to know you as a person. Got to know you as an entrepreneur got to know you as a. Traffic on you know founder? I mean I I I was very excited about that because I do meet a lot of founders in and encounters have been more about how do we raise the next round and and and it grips them. You know, to the core that somehow you sell your soul, right? You know in in search of. Of things like this, and the quests change because the quests were to actually solve something big and you had the opportunity, but then someone someone in the line things got messed up and priorities changed. But it very deeply resonated with me. I mean it. It made me question a lot of things that I do personally as well. So I mean thank you so much and I'm pretty sure listeners would would also love to to dig, go back, retrospect, reflect. I mean, there's a lot of reflection movements in this podcast and and I'm I'm so happy to and delighted to actually have hosted you.

Thanks very much Joseph. I'll just add one more thing based on what you said just.

Sure, absolutely.

Now it is that see many times and this is the reality of of of entrepreneurship. People are going to fail. I've failed 30 times in my life. I have succeeded 2 times. And I think the key is that not to not to let the failure get the better of you. Entrepreneurship is about climbing mountains beyond mountains. You climb one mountain and then you see another mountain ahead of you and that's your journey. And that's something which you have to be happy about. OK, don't give up. I mean, even if a business fails, it's the idea which has failed. It's not you as a person who has failed.

Wow, yes, absolutely. So same here. Likewise Rajesh, so I think these these I think more than anything else. For me this was more like journey of reflection and and it's built good memories. I mean fact. I think I was able to reflect a lot of different things, so it's it's it's etched right now, can't get. It off me, yeah. So thank you so much for your time and it's been a privilege like talking to you and getting to know you and looking for. Staying in touch. Thank you.

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